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The word of this month is fiets and fietsen. Fiets means
bike in Dutch and fietsen is to ride a bike.
Fiets is pronounced feets and fietsen is pronounced feetsen.

Fiets is a very important word in Dutch as you will ride a
bike almost everywhere. There are accessories for your bike to make it useful
for when you are doing things. There are saddle bags people put groceries in,
books for school, or even just your purses. Then there are bungees to hold
thing to the built in racks on the back of all bikes even those for kids. Some
people have front racks where they put milk cart boxes to carry things like the
saddle bags. Some have flower decorations or just little things to make them
look nice. There are little baskets that animals ride in, children seats that
can be added to the back or front. Here no one wears helmets nor do they often
ride on the side walk not even kids. There are special bike paths that you ride
on or just in the street. Biking is so important that kids before they can ride
their bikes to school in the Netherlands must pass a test to prove they won’t
be a danger on the road. So as you can see bikes are so important here. Thus it
would be wrong to teach you the word fiets if I didn’t also teach you the verb
fietsen.

For example: Ik heb een fiets. (I have a bike)

There are also the facts here in the Netherlands rules of conjugating
verbs. Which I myself have worked it all out but have memorized some of the
verbs.

Fietsen-to ride a bike

Ik fiets – (I ride)

Jij fietst – (You ride)

Hij/Zij fietst – (he/she ride)

Jullie fietsen – (you ride) this is plural or formal

Wji fietsen – (we ride)

Zij fietsen – (they ride) pay attention to this as she is
the same only difference is the conjugation of the verb

This verb is only used to talk about riding a bike so you
don’t have to also state the bike when talking about going on it.

For example: Ik fiets naar school. (I ride to school.)

This is my fiets. The one with the green bungee cords and is
a bluish green. The black, silver, and orange fiets is my host brother’s bike.
I ride this to school every Monday through Friday. You use the bungee cords to hold thing to the
built in rack. There is a light in the front and back which is turned on when I
ride it at night. It only has three gears and I always ride in gear 3 the
hardest one. If you think the Netherlands is flat you are wrong. Thanks to
dikes being everywhere the place has a lot of mini hills nothing like the big
ones in the USA. These wonderful things are used so much that there isn’t much
need for cars unless you are going a great distance or are in a hurry.